[mlthoughts2018]

You should question whether you really are getting valuable learning from these sources. For example, most product launches / company launches / open source project launches / arxiv research paper announcements / developer conference presentations / AI or ML demos / etc that end up on the frontpage of Hacker News are just noise / junk that gets a flare up of attention and never goes anywhere and doesn’t persist even 6 months later as a newsworthy topic or something someone needs to know to stay current.

The only thing I find unique to Hacker News is much higher quality analytical comments about politics, economics and tech industry labor issues. Almost everything else is in one ear out the other.

[readingnews]

This is a good observation. I feel like I tell myself HN is a source of information... but it really is not. You might learn "the news" from HN, but you are not learning per-se. I would point back to another comment that reading will give you more learning. I think a fair number of us may have (temporarily) lost the ability to sit and read un-distracted. I know after about a mere 10 mins with a book in a quiet room, I get antsy.

[dempedempe]

I learned this very thoroughly one day when I came across an interesting article outside of HN. I immediately went to post it on HN only discover that not only had it already been posted, I had already upvoted it!